Episode Report Card Sobell: A | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT He is a man of constant smirking
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 08.28.2005
We're back at Fox Hills. The camera pans to a sign reading "SIT DOWN when shots are fired." Unfortunately, the arrow below the stick figure's sitting haunches implies that the convicts will also be changing their drawers once they finish sitting. Michael and Sucre walk past the sign. "What are you in for?" Michael asks. "I'm doing a dime for excessive public exposition," Sucre responds, adding, "Trey Street Deuces got the hoops, the Penas got the bleachers, the Woods got the weight pile. The C.O.s got the rest. I'm telling you, the guards are the dirtiest gang in the whole place. The only difference between us and them is the badge." Michael points to an old guy cuddling a little brown tabby and asks, "Who's the pet lover?" Proving he's a recidivist at heart, Sucre exposits, "He'll deny it, but he's D.B. Cooper. Parachuted out of a plane 30 years ago with a million and a half in cash." Or $200,000, if you're into the facts of the case. But facts may only frighten and confuse us within the context of this show, so let's call it a million and a half and move on.
We move on to Wholesale, thus named because "Black Market" would have raised a lot of problematic associations with capitalism-themed super-villains, and "Retail" would have been too accurate. Michael moves away from Sucre and Wholesale's amiable ball-busting so he can resume his favorite pastime: staring into the middle distance. We see his gaze settle on a fire hydrant placed between two phone booths. Yes, in the prison yard. Because there's no possibility of angry inmates vandalizing the phones or banging each others' heads into a fixed metal object, right? And then Michael stares at a grate that's letting steam out, also in the yard. Then we see another fire hydrant, in case you really, really need to beat the crap out of someone and the other hydrant's already occupied. And we see another grate. Michael drops some magazine down the grate when nobody's looking, and it conveniently lands in an upright position against a grate inside.
Then he tells Sucre he's looking for someone by the name of Lincoln Burrows. "Linc the Sink?...As in, he'll come at you with everything but the kitchen," Wholesale says. We see the aforementioned sink sitting on his haunches in a tiny fenced-in yard. It is not nearly so lush as the one the rest of the prisoners get to stroll around. Sucre exposits that since Linc killed the vice president's brother and is due to fry in a month, he's a man with nothing to lose. And as with all other dangerous death row inmates, the only time he's anywhere near Gen Pop is when he's in chapel or doing "prison industry" (PI), which those of us on the outside also refer to as "sweatshop labor." We also establish that John Abruzzi runs the PI racket. Alert viewers will remember him as the mob boss from one of the early clippings. After he's totally shot the expository wad, Sucre finally asks, "Why do you wanna see Burrows so bad anyhow?" Michael stares hard before answering, "Because he's my brother." Cut to Sucre looking alarmed. There go his plans to sell Michael for a carton of Luckies!
Commercials. Wow, Pam Anderson is looking rough these days. Also, I do not think Victoria's Secret will succeed in making "ipex" a verb.